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Gods of Egpyt (2016)

THE BATTLE FOR ETERNITY BEGINS

A common thief joins a mythical god on a quest through Egypt.

There are some films that are so batshit insane they’re worth watching just to see how absurd they can possibly get, and Gods of Egypt gets the achievement of the most batshit insane movie this year has given us so far, although not in a good way. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this film was that it was intended to be Lionsgate’s next big franchise starter. I’m sorry Lionsgate, but I hate to break it to you, it isn’t going to happen. Because as absurd as Gods of Egypt is, it’s just really bad from start to finish, and is yet another one of those films set in Egypt that seem to feature white people in the lead roles, rather than black actors.

Gerard Butler is there to chew scenery as the antagonist and he poses a clichéd threat to the world, who wants to summon a greater evil that would spell doom for humanity. You know, the usual stuff that Set does. However, a young thief named Beck (played by Brenton Thwaites) ends up teaming up with the one-eyed God Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who is essentially what Jaime Lannister would be like if he was a good guy in order to stop Set once and for all. Beck’s motivations are just as clichéd as the rest of the film, and I hope you weren’t expecting any decent female protagonists because the only ones there are to be rescued by the main characters. It’s a script with twists and turns that you’ll see coming a mile off, and never does anything to surprise you.

The CGI varies in quality from sometimes borderline awful to decent, and with pretty much 95% of this movie being all CGI be prepared to get used to it. The film aims for epic but doesn’t even come close to touching Exodus: Gods and Kings in quality (which was at the same time, a mediocre movie) let alone greater epics like Ben-Hur. I wish Hollywood would stop trying to make films about Gods happen, because more often than not they’ve been absolutely terrible and have failed to impress.

Alex Proyas is the director of I, Robot and Knowing but here he once again delivers a film that has some bold ideas but a poor execution. The over-reliance on CGI takes you out of the conflict and the film is just so forgettable that you will struggle to name any of the characters in the first few days after watching this, and at best you’ll remember that Jaime Lannister and Gerard Butler were in this. There’s also an appearance from Civil War’s scene-stealing Chadwick Boseman, but again, don’t expect to remember what role he played either.

The film tries too hard to be funny and really backfires with several jokes that never work, and if anything you’ll be laughing at how bad they are rather than how funny they are.

Go and watch The Conjuring 2 instead if you get a choice, because Gods of Egpyt is just one terrible mess from start to finish.